Time to end reliance on online deliveries

Online deliveries were a wonderful lifeline during lockdown, and they still are for some, but whenever possible it is now time to make a change, and limit their use.

Why? Because online delivery services are not at all eco-friendly; they involve many large diesel vans making individual deliveries of groceries, clothes, books, and many other items that would otherwise all have been transported in one journey, by one car, now often an electric one. Even when the delivery companies try to coordinate deliveries to a particular area, it often doesn’t reduce the individual nature of the deliveries by much. Much, much, better for one family to make the journey to town and buy most of the household requirement at one time. One electric car journey versus three, four, or more large diesel van journeys.

Secondly, the economy needs us to change; we must buy locally and reverse the current online trend before even more Bath shops disappear. Thirdly, whenever it is possible, shopping involves exercise and even has mental health benefits.

Finally, I would mention that these large diesel delivery vans race around Bath streets, often breaking speed limits, accelerating hard, creating pollution, parking on pavements and double yellow lines, banging plastic crates, and they do all of this up to 10pm or later. So my message is, unless you really must stay at home, do not order online. Robin Rae

Bath